


Gods and Monsters

by Aviss



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Post Lady Stoneheart, Pre-Relationship, book canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-23
Updated: 2019-10-23
Packaged: 2020-12-31 19:42:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,135
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21151145
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aviss/pseuds/Aviss
Summary: The wench didn't speak for two days after they left the cave where they had almost died.





	Gods and Monsters

**Author's Note:**

> Written for a Tumblr promtp: “How do you destroy a monster without becoming one?”

The wench didn't speak for two days after they left the cave where they had almost died. She didn't sleep or eat or do anything except what Jaime directed her to, her extraordinary eyes dull and remote. 

He knew that look, had seen it before in the looking glass, distantly, except the eyes had been green and he had been wearing white. It was unnerving seeing it on someone else, moreso in her eyes.

Jaime kept a close eye on her as they made their way back to his camp, waving away the question from his men when he returned, three days after he had left without telling anyone and with a practically catatonic woman in tow, a green boy and a half-dead knight. He ordered a maester to check on them all, and find tents for the boy and the knight. 

The wench, he took to his own tent.

"This is highly irregular, my lord," the maester said while he looked her over. 

Jaime had refused to leave the tent, even when the maester had to remove Brienne's armour and jerkin to get to her torso, which was mottled purple and blue. Her arm was also broken, and she grunted when the maester set it and put a splint on it. The worst was her cheek, though, the horrific wound had been infected and suppurating by the time the maester had a chance to look at it. She had been staring into nothingness, though Jaime could see how she trembled, how her eyes filled with tears of pain she was too stubborn to let fall in front of them. 

Jaime shooed the maester out as soon as he was done in spite of his protests. "She's a highborn Lady, my Lord. You shouldn't dishonour her."

"I won't," he said, remembering how the Brotherhood had received them when they arrived. _The Kingslayer's Whore is back_, they had said, and she had hunched into herself, refusing to look at Jaime in the eye, as meek and timid as he had ever seen her.

She had been refusing to look him in the eye since the moment they departed together, the lies about Sansa Stark and the Hound echoing in the space between the two of them the loudest thing of their travel. He had known she was lying since the moment she had spoken, the lie tasting sour enough on her tongue to show on her face, but had gone with her anyway. He wasn't still sure why, just that the moment he had seen what had become of her during her quest, Jaime had known he wasn't going to let her out of his sight again. 

He had been tempted during that day's travel to knock her out and drag her back to his camp, have the maester see to her and then send her back to her father, where she would be safe. Except he had remembered then, Tarth wasn't a safe place anymore. Nor was King's Landing, or anywhere in this Gods forsaken kingdoms. 

And Winter had already come.

He would keep her by his side, then. Jaime refused to have the wench's death in his conscience because he'd been selfish enough to send her away to restore his honour. 

He went out for a moment to get some food brought to his tent, when he got back she was still sitting in the same place, still staring into nothingness. He called Peck and Pia and had them prepare a bath and help them out of their armour. He was aware of the looks they were exchanging, and of how inappropriate it was for a Lord and an unmarried highborn Lady to be undressed in the same tent. 

He didn't care, her honour couldn't be more tainted by her association with him than it already was. 

_Kingslayer's whore_, indeed, they should have called Cersei that, not the wench. Except Cersei wasn't _his_ anything anymore, she was just a whore.

"Wench," he said once they were alone. "Remove the rest of your clothes and get inside the bath." She turned to look at him, a small frown on her face, but didn't move. "Wench, I'll do it myself if necessary." The frown deepened, and she blinked rapidly, some light returning to her eyes and Jaime realized she was coming back from wherever she had been. She looked around, frantically, then her eyes landed on him and she sagged in relief. "Brienne, it's alright. We're back at my camp."

"Pod?" she rasped, her voice little more than a whisper. There was a dark mark around her neck, one Jaime had seen around the boy's and the knight's, and he didn't need much imagination to know where they had come from, not with how fond the Brotherhood had been of hangings of late. "Hyle?"

"Alive, they're being tended to by the maester."

She nodded, averting her eyes. If she was aware of her state of undress or cared about it, she made no indication. "_I'm sorry_."

"What for, wench? For leading me into a trap?" he asked, his voice sharper than he had intended. Brienne hunched further into herself, and Jaime forced himself to gentle his voice. He had thought he wasn't angry with her, but it appeared that was also a lie. "For almost dying for me?"

"I'm sorry," she said again, miserable, and Jaime sighed. 

"Get in the bath, Brienne." 

She blushed, finally realizing she was almost bare, but removed the rest of her garments, a dark flush crawling from her face to her neck and even lower, reaching her meagre teats and mingling with the purple bruises on her chest. She winced when she bent down to take off her smallclothes, and Jaime approached her to help her. She looked up at him, startled, her eyes huge in her face, and stood stock still while Jaime grabbed the cloth and pulled it down her long legs, bending down himself until his face was level with her belly and her sex. He heard her swallow loudly, or maybe it had been him, and guided her as she lifted one leg and then the other, until she was naked as that day in Harrenhal. She got into the bathtub and Jaime grabbed the cloth and soap to pass it to her. 

If he had had two hands, he would have washed her himself, it was what she had done for him then and he was still a Lannister. He paid his debts. 

Instead, he went to the tray of food and filled a goblet with wine and took a drink while Brienne scrubbed herself. "You did what you had to do," he said, knowing it was the truth. The knight, Hyle Hunt, had told him as much. 

"She refused to choose," he had told Jaime, disgust in his ruined voice, his face a map of bruises and cuts. "She would have let them hang her for you, she might have let them hang me. It was Pod she couldn't let die."

"I killed her," she said brokenly. Jaime turned and looked at her, scrubbing herself raw in the bath. He deposited the goblet on the table and approached her again, stopping her furious scrubbing with his hand. "I killed Lady Catelyn."

Brienne's eyes flew to his and she stilled, her breathing shallow. Jaime took the cloth from her and dipped it in the warm water, kneeling next to the tub to wash her to keep her from hurting herself further. "You're hurt enough, wench, no need to flay yourself alive," he said, and brought the cloth up to her face, gently rubbing it over her features. She closed her eyes and parted her lips, Jaime dipped he cloth again and cleaned her face, careful not to touch the gaping wound on her cheek. Brienne was trembling, even submerged in hot water, and Jaime made sure to be as gentle as possible, dipping the cloth in the water and then brushing her skin, moving down her neck and arms and chest oh so slowly. "You didn't kill Lady Catelyn, the Feys did that. The Boltons did that. You can even argue my family did that. Not you."

"She said to bring her your head, and I couldn't," she protested as if he hadn't spoken. She had her eyes still closed and her face still red, getting redder as Jaime passed the cloth over her breasts and sides. He felt himself beginning to harden and grit his teeth determined to ignore it. This was the same as when she had cleaned him, there was nothing sexual in it, and he wasn't attracted to the wench. 

He wasn't, he had just been too long without a woman.

"That wasn't Lady Catelyn," Jaime said, that had been pretty obvious once he had seen the rotting corpse that fool Beric had reanimated. "That was a monster."

"And what am I then?" Brienne asked, opening her eyes and looking into Jaime's. "How do you destroy a monster without becoming one?”

"I wouldn't know, wench, would I?" he said, dipping the cloth in the water again. "I did become the Kingslayer, a monster in the eyes of the realm, after killing Aerys." He raised his brows. "Legs."

Brienne obediently lifted one of her long legs and perched it on the side of the tub, and Jaime kept on cleaning her, wetting the cloth and rubbing it on the soap, and then rubbing her skin softly with it. He did her legs with the same gentleness he'd done the rest of her until he submerged his hand in the water to clean her thighs and she tensed. He realized what he'd done, how close his hand was to her sex, and moved it down her leg, towards her knee until Brienne was breathing again. He was fully hard now, and glad he was pressed against the cold and unforgiving surface of the bathtub. 

"You're not a monster," she protested once she got her breathing back, her voice breathy. He could see her nipples were peaked and her entire chest flushed, and he took a deep breath and tried to keep his own cock under control. 

This couldn't be sexual, he couldn't dishonour her like this. 

"Then neither are you," he said vehemently, tapping her other leg so she switched them. 

"You were protecting King's Landing."

He steered away from her thighs this time, no need to tempt fate. "And you were protecting your squire, and that Hyle knight, and me. You didn't kill for yourself, you are not a monster."

That was finally what got through to her, and Brienne started to shake, her eyes filling with tears, her chest heaving with sobs. Jaime dropped the cloth and helped her lean forward from the tub until she could rest her head on his shoulder, her big heaving sobs loud in the quiet tent. It had to be painful, with her broken ribs and her broken heart, she cried for what felt like hours until Jaime's knees were screaming at him and his undershirt was soaked through with water and tears. She calmed down after a while, and Jaime helped her out of the tub keeping his eyes firmly on her face. 

"Get some food and get inside the bed, wench," he said after he had helped her dry with one of his towels. They made a curious pair, him with only one hand and her with one arm in a splint. Between the two of them, they were barely enough for most basic functions. "I'll go check on your squire and the knight and come back."

"Thank you, Jaime," she said, finally sounding more like herself, and she started to put her clothes back on. 

"Eat now, you haven't had anything in two days," he said putting his jerking back on so he could go outside looking had decent. There was nothing to be done about the state of his breeches, at least until he was outside in the frigid air. "I'll be back soon."

He stepped out of his tent and let the icy winter air clear his head and cool his body, his erection stubbornly refusing to subside for a few minutes. He had to go check on the squire as he had promised, and then he would come back to the wench and they would sleep until morning. There was only one bed, but they had shared more and he had no intention to let her out of his sight at all. 

And then, then they would have to decide whether they were going to King's Landing to wrinkle the King out of Cersei's hands, or whether they were going to the Vale to find Sansa stark. 

But whatever they did, they would be going together, that much he knew. 

...


End file.
